Guest Reviews

This is one of the best behind the scenes type Star Trek books that I have ever read. Well, okay, so I've only ever read two of them, but still... This is really a very interesting book, which follows the story of Star Trek: The Motion Picture from early development as a television pilot episode for Star Trek Phase II through to the final product. The book is crammed with official information, from blueprints of props and original episode concepts all the way through to the lost series' writer's bible. Just before you hit the midpoint, you see an earlier (and in my opinion, better) version of the script for TMP. After this are 32 pages of full color art, concept sketches, and frames from test footage. After these mostly very interesting images are twelve episode concepts and one episode script. Two of these episodes made it into TNG in one form or another, and one of those two was made worse by the TNG version of its script. We also get a fascinating glimpse of a Klingon Empire that might have been if Phase II had gone on.